


Trick or Treat

by luckydip



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 16:16:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17103887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckydip/pseuds/luckydip
Summary: “We talked about this. What happens if we get caught talking in front of people?”





	Trick or Treat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/gifts).



> Dear Heather, I loved your prompt about Venom being confused about bits of our society, so ended up writing a story about entirely the wrong holiday. Hopefully you enjoy it even though it's out of season. 
> 
> Have a great Yuletide! Thanks to Tuesday for the really insightful beta job, I've made some edits since, so any remaining errors are my own.

**Eddie?**

“Mm-hmm?”

**Eddie?**

“Mm-hmm?”

**Eddie!**

“Ah!” Eddie barely suppressed a flinch as Venom shouted in his head. The old woman in the seat opposite glanced up from her knitting to stare at him, and Eddie grit his teeth to stop from shouting back.

Damn it. The tram pulled to a stop and, frustrated, Eddie stomped off the car several stops earlier than he needed to. As soon as he got a few steps away, he spoke. “Seriously?”

**What?**

“We talked about this. What happens if we get caught talking in front of people?” Eddie paused. “Well?”

**They will believe that you are crazy.**

Exactly. Eddie was well aware how lucky he was that he hadn’t been committed after he and Venom had first bonded. It was probably only Dan’s interference at the restaurant that had stopped someone from calling the police. He’d always be grateful to him for keeping him from that. “And what happens to crazy people?”

**They are locked up.**

“And?” Eddie prompted.

**And put through the MRI machine.** Eddie could practically feel Venom shudder at the thought. He sympathized. It hadn’t been easy for Eddie either.

“So you need to keep it down in public, okay?”

**Okay, Eddie.** It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, and Eddie suspected it wouldn’t be the last. Venom was like a small child in some respects.

**Eddie?**

“Yes?”

**I have found the human body to be rather fragile.**

Well, not all species could completely devour another person with a single bite. Slightly put out, Eddie figured the comment was more about the strength of Venom’s species than the weakness of humans. But this wasn’t a new thought, so that probably wasn’t what Venom was getting at. “Okay.”

**There was a human on that car with a knife through their skull. In my experience, humans cannot survive that type of injury.**

Eddie laughed, glad no one was coming in the opposite direction to see him. If there was one thing Venom had ample experience on, it was how to cause harm to the human body. They’d killed maybe a dozen people in the time between them first meeting and that fateful confrontation with Riot at the Life Foundation. That didn’t even include the bad guys that Venom had eaten in the months following to feed himself and stave off the urge to snack on Eddie’s organs. 

At least this one, Eddie could explain. “He wasn’t actually injured. It’s Halloween.”

**Halloween?**

“Yeah. It’s a holiday, kind of. A day that we celebrate every year.”

**By faking injuries?**

“Not quite.”

Having finally made it back to his apartment block, Eddie dug the keys out of his pocket and let himself into the stairwell. At least once they were inside, he could talk to Venom without worrying about anyone catching them, particularly the neighbors who might notice a pattern in his behavior. He’d made sure to pick out a new apartment with decent soundproofing for this very reason; he was fairly certain the realtor had thought he was asking because he was planning to have a lot of loud sex.

**So why?** Venom prompted after Eddie’s thoughts had trailed off.

Halloween, right. “A lot of people like to dress up and go out to parties. Kids tend to go trick or treating.”

Eddie pulled open the fridge and started to put away the groceries they’d gone out for in the first place. “Trick or treating’s when the kids will dress up in costumes and go around to neighbors’ houses to ask for candy as a treat.”

**I see. So what is the trick?**

“There isn’t a trick as such. Or there shouldn’t be,” Eddie amended as he thought back to the year that some neighborhood assholes had thrown eggs at his door just because he’d been working on a story over Halloween and hadn’t been in. “It’s more something that they say they’ll do if they don’t get a treat.”

**So why do people give them this treat?**

“For fun? It gives a sense of community. This one old lady when I was growing up, she couldn’t have kids of her own, so on Halloween she turned her place into a haunted house. Put up cobwebs and had scary music. There were skeletons that would jump out at you from around corners. It was pretty cool.” And it had been. Miss Jones had always had the best candy, too. All the kids in the area would try to swing by her place, Eddie remembered with a smile. He idly wondered how she was doing, and if she still decorated her house on Halloween.

**I see.** Though Venom didn’t sound convinced, Eddie could feel it being mentally filed under ‘odd rituals that humans have.’

“It’s more of a kids’ thing, though. Adults, a lot of them just dress up and go out drinking.”

**Dress _up_?**

“Yeah. In costumes, so that people think they’re someone else. They pretend to be monsters or supernatural creatures. Some people dress up like victims or corpses. The guy on the tram wasn’t actually hurt. The knife was fake, and the blood was probably just corn syrup and food coloring.” He was a little surprised that Venom had been fooled by it; he had to be experienced enough with human blood at this point to know better.

**Hmmm …** Eddie finished unpacking while Venom processed this new information, probably checking it against memories in Eddie’s head to get further understanding.

It was a few minutes before Venom answered, and by that point Eddie was flicking through the cupboards and working out what he was going to do for dinner.

**It seems to be normal for humans to go out dressed as other creatures on Halloween.**

“Fairly. In some places no one would even look twice at you for it.”

**In what sort of places?**

“Like a college bar. Get there late enough, and they’ll all be drunk and won’t notice what’s going on.”

**Are there college bars here?**

“In San Francisco? Loads. There’s a UoC place not far from here.” It had cheap drinks, so when money was tight, Eddie had gone.

**I wish to try this.**

It was all the warning that Eddie got before Venom seeped out and across his skin to take full control.

Tongue hanging out, Venom turned and grinned at this reflection in the oven door. “Trick or Treat.”


End file.
